If I had to point to the most significant overall change in my leadership, it would be this: capping my emotions. The faucet is off, or at least on a slow drip. I can't react emotionally and build respect or relationships. I can be authentic without spewing my emotions all over the place. That shift has changed everything. It's changed how people experience me. It's changed what I'm able to accomplish. It's changed the quality of my relationships and my effectiveness as a l

But that change required brutal honesty with myself. Reflecting on situations and really thinking about my role in the status of the relationship. Understanding what I'd done to cause the problems and then owning it. Hindsight is said to be 20/20, and it certainly can be if you have your eyes open. You just have to be willing to open your eyes. I had to look at relationships that weren't working and ask myself hard questions. What did I do to contribute to this? How did my

It builds directly on self-awareness. You can't manage emotions you don't recognize. But awareness alone isn't enough. You also need the ability to do something productive with what you're feeling. Self-management doesn't mean suppressing your emotions or pretending you don't feel things. It means feeling them without letting them control you. It means responding thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.

Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what's really going on in social situations. It's reading body language, noticing tone shifts, picking up on group dynamics, and understanding the unspoken undercurrents that affect every interaction. It's not mind reading. It's observation. Attention. Tuning into the people around you instead of being so focused on yourself that you miss everything else.

Self-awareness isn't just knowing you exist or being able to list your strengths and weaknesses on a resume. Honestly, it’s hardly any of that. It's the ability to understand how you're showing up in real time, how others are experiencing you, and how your internal state is affecting your external impact. It's reading the room. It's catching yourself mid-sentence. It's recognizing when your approach isn't working and adjusting before you lose the room entirely.

I think the most interesting story about emotional intelligence I can think of involves a person who told me they didn't need any training on emotional intelligence because they were "a professional at it." At the same time, members of their team spent most of their time working around this person and rolling their eyes at them.